Vegas Smagas

well, we're leaving for vegas in about two hours. we're driving up with jeffrey, connor, our 2 year old nephew jacob and myself. jeff's parents will be right behind us, caravanning as they put it, with my sil stephanie, and two more nephews kaden who is 7 and jalen who is 12. tomorrow, my sil sarah is flying in and my other sil megan and her husband ryan are arriving. good times.

i'll be back sunday night and will surely have stories, photos and annoying stories of what happens when you bring 8 adult family members, plus 4 children to sin city. wow. hopefully it's going to be as awesome as it sounds...i can only hope.

Readers are plentiful, thinkers are rare

I’m a snob. Fine. Whatever. But, when did USED bookstores become snobby? Seriously. I went to Changing Hands last weekend (which I love) and had a few books to get rid of. There were a couple titles I wanted to pick up and figured, hey, I’ll sell my books back and get some credit…sure why not? So, I give them nearly 15 books. Now, I’m good with books. I don’t trash them, I don’t have them near water so they get that gross wet wiggly look to them and I certainly don’t make notes, fold corners or anything else crazy. So, when they gave me back my bag and it only had two books missing I was confused. Huh? She said yes, we don’t buy paperbacks that have creases in the bindings. So, how do you read them without creasing the binding. The dirty look she gave me was completely not necessary. I was totally serious. How can I accomplish that? Teach me snobby used bookstore peddler.

Anyone know of any less particular book stores where I may unload these books? Don’t say Bookman’s. Again, I am a snob and this snob has her limits.

Update: Ok, I no longer have limits. I went to bookmans at lunch and they only bought back 3 more books. They asked if I wanted to donate them. Heck no, thank you very much, I'll just haul these last 10 books around with me until I find someone who wants them. Anyone want some free books?

My new favorite websites

Fail Blog--ok, this site is absolutely amazing. trust me.

Postcards from yo momma--wow, if i keep laughing outloud to myself they are going to commit me. moms are crazy.

There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.

In case anyone feels like reading along…here are the upcoming books that my bookclub has chosen. yes, i'm in a book club. I also stole some brief summaries from amazon so enjoy! If you’ve read them, let me know your thoughts!

Paula by Isabel Allende...Paula is a soul-baring memoir, which like a novel of suspense, one reads without drawing a breath. The point of departure for these moving pages is a tragic personal experience. In December 1991, Isabel Allende's daughter, Paula, became gravely ill and shortly thereafter fell into a coma. During months in the hospital, the author began to write the story of her family for her unconscious daughter. In the telling, bizarre ancestors appear before our eyes; we hear both delightful and bitter childhood memories, amazing anecdotes of youthful years, the most intimate secrets passed along in whispers. Chile, Allende's native land, comes alive as well, with the turbulent history of the military coup of 1973, the ensuing dictatorship, and her family's years of exile.

Angels & Demons by Dan Brown (guy who wrote DaVinci Code)...Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is shocked to find proof that the legendary secret society, the Illuminati-dedicated since the time of Galileo to promoting the interests of science &condemning the blind faith of Catholicism--is alive, well, & murderously active. Brilliant physicist Leonardo Vetra has been murdered, his eyes plucked out, and the society's ancient symbol branded upon his chest. His final discovery, antimatter, the most powerful and dangerous energy source known to man, has disappeared--only to be hidden somewhere beneath Vatican City on the eve of the election of a new pope. Langdon and Vittoria, Vetra's daughter and colleague, embark on a frantic hunt through the streets, churches, and catacombs of Rome, following a 400-year-old trail to the lair of the Illuminati, to prevent the incineration of civilization.

As Shakespeare knew, love burns high when thwarted by obstacles. In Twilight, an exquisite fantasy by Stephenie Meyer, readers discover a pair of lovers who are supremely star-crossed. Bella adores beautiful Edward, and he returns her love. But Edward is having a hard time controlling the blood lust she arouses in him, because--he's a vampire. At any moment, the intensity of their passion could drive him to kill her, and he agonizes over the danger. But, Bella would rather be dead than part from Edward, so she risks her life to stay near him, and the novel burns with the erotic tension of their dangerous and necessarily chaste relationship.

Clare, the narrator, is a prematurely cynical Ohio girl, daughter of a left-wing schoolteacher, who says up-front that all she wanted out of college when she went to Oberlin in 1973 was "unrest and demonstrations." Sally Rose is her roommate, an apparently nave, sheltered kid from a wealthy Los Angeles family whose occasional sly wit and perfect word choices appeal to Clare. The girls grow close, and soon Clare is making regular visits to the big house off Mulholland Drive where Sid, Sally's indulgent, wise-guy father, seems to cast a spell over a happy household. Sally never questions the source of the family wealth, but inquisitive Clare does and that is the first of many shocks that unfold as the shadows begin to gather around the Roses. Sally's bright, perky younger brother, Ben, turns into a haunted druggie; their mother, ace cook Esther, becomes increasingly remote; Sid begins a long decline into Alzheimer's. Yet despite their geographical distance, the two girls, Sally going into law of a peculiarly California kind, Clare becoming a hardheaded doctor with a specialty in AIDS, never lose their deep attachment, which somehow sustains them through a darkening landscape. They both suffer their share of unhappy relationships and here Moody's skills at character drawing, already clear in her portraits of Sid and Ben, take full rein and both come to rueful realization of their limitations, and those of life itself. Even in its dying fall, however, the book never loses its edge, at once compassionate and humorous, nor its moving conviction that a strong friendship between women can be one of life's most powerful relationships.

Congratulations Bush Family!

Excuse me? I am a sacred vessel, alright? All you've got in your stomach is Taco Bell

ok, i totally don't feel this way about being a mom but that doesn't mean i can't find the humor in this ecard--'cause i can! there are many, many more on their site i'm sure but since the silly ass firewall on my office computer won't allow me to check them out, i stole this one from DadCentric. hilarity.

I love mother's day. i think it's awesome. i really wish that instead of gifts and pampering i could convince the holiday to erase some of the things being a mom gave me-like scaring and a complete inability to be selfish, attend happy hours at a moments notice and carry nothing but a medium sized purse. let's brainstorm on this immediately. we can do this.

so, my mother's day was pretty good. can't believe this is actually my second mother's day. i barely made it out of the hospital last year in time. this year, connor and i took my mom to brunch at Crackers & Co. Yum. Bonus~they were handing out free desserts to moms. I wonder if they would refuse you if you weren't a mom. hmmm. that'd be kinda jerky of them. anyway, then connor and i ran over to Changing Hands where they would only buy two of my twelve books i was trying to get rid of. that's annoying and another post alltogether. my plan was to drop connor off with jeffrey and go and get a facial and massage. unfortunatly when we got home jeffrey and i were wrestling around with connor and he managed to slam the back of his head directly into my nose. holy crap. i iced if for about half an hour and the swelling went down. i had serious concerns that it was broken. happy freakin mothers day to me. anyway, not broken and some serious makeup was able to cover the bruising this morning. awesome. anyway, after the swelling calmed a bit more we went to dinner and then home. all in all a pretty good, quiet day. with our family, any day where we have less than 5 planned activities is a pretty quiet day.

Jeffrey (and connor) did great with the mommy gifts this year. here's some of my loot!

super cute necklace that says 'Mom, I love you' in French...lovely pearl bracelet with a Mom charm...and Juno...and of course the undying love of my husband and child! good times. permanent facial deformity-0, Lindsay-1. Take that.